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With the release of DC Comics’ Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, superhero fans around the world has witnessed the tense battle between Batman and Superman where Batman uses his skills and intelligence in order to fight the god-like Superman. Today, Hot Toys is excited to introduce the new 1/6th scale collectible figure of the Armored Batman (Battle Damaged Version) as a Toy Fair Exclusive item only available in selected markets!

Inspired by the fierce battle between the Bat of Gotham and Son of Krypton in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the collectible figure is fastidiously crafted based on Ben Affleck’s image as Batman in his battle damaged armored suit, featuring a newly developed battle damage armored head sculpt with single LED light-up eye, meticulously sculpted armor with battle damaged parts, muscular body with improved articulation, a LED light-up Kryptonite spear, a grapple gun, a grenade gun, and a specially designed Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice themed figure stand.

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This is the recently released Hot Toys 1/6th scale RoboCop (Battle Damaged Version) Collectible Figure from the Hot Toys MMS266 1/6th scale RoboCop (Battle Damaged Version) and Alex Murphy Collectible Figures Set which was part of my July haul – posted on my toy blog HERE.

RoboCop is a 1987 American cyberpunk action film directed by Paul Verhoeven and written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner. The film stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Kurtwood Smith, Miguel Ferrer, and Ronny Cox. Set in a crime-ridden Detroit, Michigan, in the near future, RoboCop centers on police officer Alex Murphy (Weller) who is brutally murdered by a gang of criminals and subsequently revived by the mega-corporation Omni Consumer Products (OCP) as a superhuman cyborg law enforcer known as “RoboCop”.

Having already released a die-cast RoboCop figure earlier this year (see my part 1 review post HERE), Hot Toys went on to release this two figures set with a battle damaged RoboCop as seen towards the end of the film where RoboCop removes his helmet to reveal the human face of Alex Murphy under the helmet. This Hot Toys Battle Damaged RoboCop collectible figure is not die-cast but still part of their Movie Masterpiece Series. It would be quite crazy to create the battle damage effect on a die-cast figure. With Hot Toys’ skill in crafting, sculpting and painting, they really don’t have to resort to die-cast metal parts to create the metallic look. They have been doing fine with non-metallic parts / materials as evident in their original release of RoboCop so many years ago – see my post HERE of Hot Toys MMS010 RoboCop 12-inch figure (The First / Original version) which was released in 2006.

You can order this from Sideshow Collectibles

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Box packaging is the standard shoe-box style with lid that opens to reveal the two figures inside the tray along with their accessories. The materials used for the box is rather thin and the box is not as sturdy as some of Hot Toys other packaging boxes.

Instructions are found on two separate Instruction Sheets, one for Battle Damaged RoboCop and another for Alex Murphy. I’ll be covering Battle Damaged RoboCop in this first part review.

RoboCop’s head can only be rotated to the sides within 15 degrees. Turning the head with excessive force might damage indicated parts on the head. Movement is a bit restrictive but that is understandable because as a robot in the film, RoboCop didn’t have the body of an agile gymnast who could do flips, somersaults and cart wheels. For the film, the RoboCop suit proved to be too heavy and cumbersome so it was decided that they would slow down RoboCop’s movements in order to make them more appealing and plausible. The Instruction Sheet also shows you how the hidden thigh holster works and which pistol (die-cast version) can be placed inside the holster.

Here’s Hot Toys MMS266 1/6th scale RoboCop (Battle Damaged Version) Collectible Figure out of the box. I switched out the pair of fist hands with the hands that have movable fingers so that RoboCop can hold his pistol. I have also revealed the thigh holster to show where RoboCop stores his gun. The main weapon used by RoboCop (Peter Weller) is the “Auto 9”. This is a Beretta 93R machine pistol which was heavily modified for the film, featuring a longer barrel with an enormous compensator/flash hider shaped like a casket, plastic grips, and a taller rear sight to match the raised front sight.

RoboCop’s thigh holster works in the same way as the die-cast version (see my earlier post HERE for comparisons) except that Hot Toys die-cast RoboCop is all shiny and looks brand new whereas this battle damaged RoboCop looks all worn out and used / abused after his encounter with ED-209 at OCP headquarters. Check out the turnaround views of this movie-accurate RoboCop (Battle Damaged Version) Collectible Figure which is specially crafted based on the image of Peter Weller as the battle damaged RoboCop. It features a new sculpted head sculpt with mechanical details, specially painted battle damaged armor, and working thigh gun holster.

The top and bottom pictures show the thigh holster opened and closed.

Scroll down to see the close-up views of the authentic and detailed likeness of Peter Weller as RoboCop as seen in the movie, with a newly sculpted head sculpt with mechanical details, Movie-accurate facial expression with detailed wrinkles and skin texture. Hot Toys never fails to impress me with their sculpting and painting skills when it comes to head sculpts but this one goes up a notch with the combination of metal machine parts fused with human skin. I have always wanted to own a piece of this particular head sculpt because it’s a depiction of Murphy’s struggles in reasserting his humanity over his robotic cyborg body and how he overcomes the machine to become a man again.

If you compare this latest head sculpt with the first removable RoboCop helmet Hot Toys released many years ago (posted HERE), you can really see how far they have come in terms of standards and quality.

Check out the close-up shots taken of RoboCop’s battle damaged parts. Be amazed at the level of details and the high standards as well as quality Hot Toys has set for the industry!

The interchangeable right fist hand with spike is bloodied because RoboCop stabs Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) in the neck with his neural spike. Before the incident, the spike is used to access the police computers for information and records. The clean version was included with the die-cast version (posted HERE).

Close-up shot of the two pistols: solid die-cast molded piece (top) and plastic version (bottom) with removable magazine and movable slide (articulated barrel). The original gun for RoboCop was a Desert Eagle, but this was deemed too small. A Beretta 93R was heavily modified by Ray Williams of Freshour Machine, Texas City, Texas, who extended the gun barrel to make it look bigger and more proportional to RoboCop’s hand.

When Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith) and his gang are asked by Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) to kill RoboCop, they are provided with an experimental military weapon being developed by OCP called the “Cobra Assault Cannon”. The Cobras are actually older-specification Barrett M82 long-range .50 BMG rifles which have been dressed up extra plastic housing over the receivers and fitted with gigantic scopes (The scopes were originally supposed to show computer-generated targeting information, but this idea was scrapped due to budget constraints).

Stickers are provided for you to paste onto the bottles to convert them into jars of baby food. This was what Murphy’s partner Lewis used to feed RoboCop. A guy’s got to eat, even if he’s half-man, half-robot, all cop. Don’t ask me where it all goes and what happens to the waste.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is a fantastic way to turn $250 million into a well-produced piece of mediocrity. For all its improvements over its predecessors in Peter Jackson’s second trilogy of Middle Earth, this third and concluding film is still problematic, sometimes for the same and sometimes for very different reasons. Whether it’s an issue with turning the source material into a cinematic product or it’s with the directorial vision, The Battle of the Five Armies is just an acceptable yet somewhat disappointing ending to The Hobbit.

This picks up right where The Desolation of Smaug left off—right down to the second—so going into this film cold is ill-advised. We’re left with Smaug about to bring ruin to the nearby village of Laketown while the company of dwarves (and one hobbit) sits up in the Lonely Mountain on a pile of riches. Thorin Oakenshield, however, is losing his mind with the greed of maintaining his recently reclaimed ancestral wealth.

And then Bard, the bowman with a disappointing familial association with Smaug, kills the dragon. Within the first 15 minutes, we have resolution from the cliffhanger of the previous film. This is representative of the biggest problem with the film, let alone the trilogy as a whole. The book was more or less structured as a traditional three-act story, but Jackson, in stretching the one book into three films, had to inject his own scaffolding.

This means that right off the bat, there has to be concluding action to the previous film simply because we have even more resolution to reach before the end of both the source and the movie. So something that otherwise was another step in the introduction and building of Bard as a character was built into a necessary cinematic climax that ultimately got squashed and swept in the opening scenes.

The title is also indicative of the film’s follies. We do indeed eventually arrive at a battle involving five armies, but everything preceding that clashing quintet is just more fighting. It eventually becomes quite tiring. Numbing, even, like a haunted house where nothing but people with chainsaws come jumping out at you around every corner.

Jackson, to his credit, attempts to throttle the nonstop action with some semblance of pacing in a few stealthy bits and the building of armies, but after having so many unbroken sequences of clattering and yelling, it becomes confusing more than anything. Instead of having a few highlight reel moments sprinkled as memorable treats throughout the movie, there is one every ten or so minutes. Do you like that cherry on top of your sundae? Good, because here’s a whole jar of ‘em.

For the most part, though, the action is massively improved over The Desolation of Smaug where everything felt exceptionally inconsequential. This is a suitably dark film with dread and weariness slathered all over it with evocative fighting to match. Things feel like they have heft and weight, as if everyone is truly struggling to make it, even at the hands of the most skilled fighters like Legolas and Thorin.

The one exception, once again, is the dwarves. More accurately, one specific dwarf who seemed more or less invincible in the middle of a bloody and body ridden battlefield. It definitely imbued right back into this grim entry a sense of cartoonish safety, albeit only briefly. Still, it’s a reminder of what the film is trying so hard not to be.

Action, however, is most certainly a strong suit for Jackson now. He was always adept at large-scale, sweeping frames of combat, but he now also has a more deft hand at specificity as well. If you recall the wizard “battle” between Gandalf and Saruman in The Lord of the Rings trilogy, you can remember how he made something so cool almost laughable. Now, Jackson capably turns personal physical conflicts immediately and intuitively compelling.

He also carries and throws around a great sense of inevitability. That was the most impressive part of The Two Towers, where it felt like we were all arriving at a conclusion that we both wanted to see and hated seeing. It was so exciting while still we knew terrible things were going to happen. That feeling is capitalized a few too many times, though.

That sentiment also goes for concluding scenes. There are several bits and bobs established throughout the trilogy that get capped here in this last movie (along with major problems and events), and they all happen inevitable regularity. Tauriel and Kíli; Legolas and Thranduil; and Bard and Smaug coinciding with the dwarves and the Arkenstone; Gandalf and Sauron; and Thorin and Azog the Defiler. At some point, it feels like a checklist of loose ends being tied up and just as abrupt.

While this is a brief movie relative to the others at a sprinting, sword-smashing 144 minutes, it still has a tendency to feel as if it drags on. It is an artifact of Jackson’s inability to succinctly shoot large scale battles, but also some surfacing bits of inexplicable drama and romances that happens seemingly for little to no reason. It renders a viewer’s focus across several narrative planes that just shouldn’t be there.

There are a lot of discrete problems with the movie, but make no mistake as the foundation of this and every other film of Jackson’s has a rock solid foundation. The acting, the music, the sound design, the production design, and the cinematography all come up to be top of the line, or at least close enough for such grand scale epics. But you can’t act away or build up enough orcs or conduct enough orchestras to overcome structural narrative shortcomings.

For all the basics that the movie nails (which anyone can tell you, it’s often the fundamentals that are the hardest to perfect), it is still a flawed film in its outset intent and the open ends left in its hands from An Unexpected Journey and The Desolation of Smaug. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies is a fine film (and the best of the trilogy to be sure), but it’s still not a great one.

+ Great sense of circumstantial inevitably
+ Jackson learned how to shoot small scale battles
+ Improved feeling of consequential action
– Abrupt and tiring resolutions over and over again
– Inexplicable romances and drama surfacing all over the place
– Numbing exposure to nonstop combat

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